


I will pay the bill, you taste the wine

by Waistcoat35



Series: they slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Dinner, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24564562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: "No, no, it's my treat."The summer of 1928.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: they slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772770
Comments: 10
Kudos: 80





	I will pay the bill, you taste the wine

**Author's Note:**

> Vague credit to @annabellblood2002 on tumblr for a line in this, which is not identical but inspired it, and I didn't realise until it was done, at which point I was too tired to edit.

They're in a little café near St. James' Park, and after a stroll around the lake to feed the ducks, have been for most of the few hours they've managed to scrape together. Richard has finally managed a half-day and Thomas had waited until one of the family wanted something from London and offered to go on an errand with the excuse that he had his own reasons to go there for the day. 

Thomas had called the meal an early supper, and Richard had called it a late lunch, which Thomas has concluded is because Richard is incapable of _not_ being late. 

'I most certainly am not!' Richard wears an expression of mock-disbelief. 

'Name _one_ thing you haven't been late for that isn't work-related.' 

Richard's smile curls into a Cheshire grin, and Thomas gets an odd feeling in his stomach - not entirely unlike the feeling of knowing he's in trouble, but lighter, giddier.

'I'd say that our finding one another was rather perfectly timed.' 

Thomas bites his lip and probably turns the same shade of cranberry as Mrs Hughes' sitting room rug as he suddenly and inexplicably becomes very interested in his napkin, which does not help in the slightest due to being covered in little doodles Richard has done over the last hour or so, taking silly requests from Thomas. On his face, the blush probably looks like a beetroot stain on a kitchen apron. He suddenly does not feel as dignified as he would like. 

After a few minutes of good-natured bickering about the bill, Thomas is raising his eyebrows at Richard and giving him a significant look after the other man succeeds in swooping to pay before he can. As they rise from their seats (with Richard holding Thomas' coat up behind him and helping him into it, since there are few patrons inside) and head towards the door, Thomas tries once again and fruitlessly to give Richard the money- and then just half, when the first attempt fails. Richard pushes the note gently back towards his chest, both of them - or maybe just Thomas - very aware of how his warm fingers brush against the sliver of cool skin exposed between Thomas' glove and his sleeve.

"No, no, it's my treat." And then - "it's an important date, after all, is it not?"

Thomas colours, and glances away at the pavement. His next words are a question, an answer, a confession, all at once. "You remembered, then."

Richard smiles warmly. "How could I forget? First anniversary. It's a bit of a big one, isn't it?" And so it is. An entire year since they met. (He is aware that most couples choose their anniversary as the date they first went somewhere together, the date they began to court one another, or some such thing - sometimes the date they began to love one another. The date of the royal visit is, in some ways, all three - and so they have chosen it. Apparently without even needing to ask the other.) 

"Well - thank you," Thomas says, throat somewhat tight, because for the first time in a long time he feels as though his partner is just as invested in this as he is. (He does, of course, have something in return - a bookmark with a crescent moon on the end of the ribbon he'd found when out in Thirsk. He had worried about it being too little or too much - and Richard is the first person who makes him feel as if he could never possibly be either.) 

**Author's Note:**

> Richard, after two fics in a row where Thomas got to say the line from the prompt: mom said it's my turn on the sappy love languages


End file.
